7.9: Media
Take a minute to think about how much media you are exposed to in one day—from watching television and movies, to cruising the Internet, reading newspapers, books, and magazines, listening to music and watching music videos, or playing video games. The majority of this media is produced by corporations, and infused and supplemented with advertisements.
According to the Nielsen Company—a marketing corporation that collects statistics on media usage—report, the average American “18-34 spent two hours and 45 minutes daily watching live TV in the 4th Quarter of 2015, and one hour and 23 minutes using TV-connected devices—a total of four hours and 8 minutes using a TV set for any purpose” (Nielsen Company, 2016, p 201). The pervasiveness of an ever present mass media begs a number of questions:
What are the effects of such an overwhelming amount of exposure to media that is often saturated with advertisements?
How do media construct or perpetuate gendered, sexualized, classed, ableist, and racialized differences and inequalities?
What is the relationship between media and consumers?
How do consumers interact with media?
Media expert and sociologist Michael Kimmel (2003) argues that the media are a primary institution of socialization that not only reflects, but creates culture. Media representation is a key domain for identity formation and the creation of gendered and sexualized differences. For example, think back to Disney movies you were probably shown as a child. The plots of these movies typically feature a dominant young man—a prince, a colonial ship captain, a soldier—who is romantically interested in a young woman—both are always assumed to be heterosexual—who at first resists the advances of the young man, but eventually falls in love with him and marries him. These Disney movies teach children a great deal about gender and sexuality; specifically, they teach children to value hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity . Hegemonic masculinity refers to a specific type of culturally-valued masculinity tied to marriage, heterosexuality, and patriarchal authority in the family and workplace, and maintains its privileged position through subordinating other less dominant forms of masculinity (i.e., dominance over men of lower socioeconomic classes or gay men). Emphasized femininity, meanwhile, refers to a compliance with the normative ideal of femininity, as it is oriented to serving the interests of men (Connell 1987).
What do Disney movies have to do with how people actually live their lives? It is because they are fictional and do not have to be verified by reality, and they are so pervasive in our culture and shown to us at such a young age, that they may shape our gendered and sexualized selves in ways that we do not even realize. How many times have you heard people say that they want a “fairy tale wedding,” or heard the media refer to a celebrity wedding as a “fairy tale wedding?” This is one example of how the media reproduces dominant ideologies—the ideas, attitudes, and values of the dominant culture—about gender and sexuality.
Media also reproduce racialized and gendered normative standards in the form of beauty ideals for both women and men. As Jean Kilbourne’s video series Killing Us Softly illustrates, representations of women in advertising, film, and magazines often rely on the objectification of women—cutting apart their bodies with the camera frame and re-crafting their bodies through digital manipulation, in order to create feminized bodies with characteristics that are largely unattainable by the majority of the population. Kilbourne shows how advertising often values the body types and features of white women—having petite figures and European facial features—while often exoticizing women of color by putting them in “nature” scenes and animal-print clothing that are intended to recall a pre-civilizational past. The effect of this is to cast women of color as animalistic, savage creatures—a practice that has historically been used in political cartoons and depictions of people of color, to legitimize their subjugation as less than human. In addition, media depicts the world from a masculine point of view, representing women as sex objects. This kind of framing, what Laura Mulvey called the male gaze, encourages men viewers to see women as objects and encourages women to see themselves as objects of men’s desire; the male gaze is thus a heterosexual male gaze. These are just a few examples of how media simultaneously reflect and construct differences in power between social groups in society through representing those groups.
Another way in which media reflect and simultaneously produce power differences between social groups is through symbolic annihilation . Symbolic annihilation refers to how social groups that lack power in society are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized through mass media representations, which simultaneously reinforce dominant ideologies and the privilege of dominant groups. For example, as we argued earlier, gay and lesbian, as well as transgender and disabled characters in mass media are often few, and when they are present, they are typically stereotyped and misrepresented. Trans women characters portrayed through the cisgender heterosexual male gaze are often used as plot twists or objects of ridicule for comedic effect, and are often represented as “actually men” who deceive men in order to “trap” them into having sex with them; these representations function to justify and normalize portrayals of disgust in response to them and violence against them. These kinds of portrayals of trans women as “evil deceivers” and “pretenders” have been used in court cases to pardon perpetrators who have murdered trans women (Bettcher 2007).
While Jean Kilbourne’s insights illustrate how beauty ideals produce damaging effects on women and girls, her model of how consumers relate to media constructs media consumers as passively accepting everything they see. As Michael Kimmel (2003) argues, “The question is never whether or not the media do such and such, but rather how the media and its consumers interact to create the varying meanings that derive from our interactions with those media” (Kimmel 2003: 238). No advertisement, movie, or any form of media has an inherent, intended meaning that passes directly from the producer of that media to the consumer of it, but consumers interact with, critique, and sometimes reject the intended messages of media. In this way, the meanings of media develop through the interaction between the media product and the consumers who are interacting with it. Furthermore, media consumers can blur the distinction between producer and consumer through creating their own media in the form of videos, music, pamphlets, ‘zines, and other forms of cultural production . Therefore, while media certainly often reproduce dominant ideologies and normative standards, media consumers from different standpoints can and do modify and reject the intended meanings of media (Kang, et al., 2017).
Heteronormativity, sexism, racism, ableism, classism, and genderism are some of the “isms” that divide us, and uphold social messages that define a good way to be a sexual being. This script lays out a false binary that privileges those who are superior (who follow the script) over those inferior (those who have a different script). This way of looking at sexuality is very limiting. Having a wider array of story and images that capture the diversity of identity, orientation, level of sexual desire, and lifestyle would allow for greater representation and help de-center the heteronormative sexual script so prevalent in much of the media we consume. Imagine how different a society in which all forms of sex and communication about sex were represented non-judgmentally in the media could be.
As we progress with our openness to gender and sexual orientation spectrums, along with body and sex positivity, we must grant the same freedom of expression to all. In a hypersexualized (yet sexually repressed) society, those who do not engage in sex ( people who are asexual or ace), or have different preferences of intimacy not involving physical touch are not given a space to freely celebrate who they are. Without the growth of identity and folx expressing themselves as ace, there was not a term for someone who did not find pleasure in sex or seek it out. Because of the sexual narrative told to us, people who identify as ace may even think something is wrong with them since everyone else around them is enjoying physical intimacy. There is not a right amount of sexual desire or a right way to enjoy sex or our bodies. Yet our culture is telling us through various ways that it is and can provide medical interventions in the form of pharmaceuticals to aid in making us “normal.” Individuals who have a lower sexual desire are told that is a problem to be fixed. Varying levels of libido over the life course is typical but our culture tells us we should be wanting a specific amount of sexual gratification. For more on libido, please see Chapter 13 on Sexual Health.
Two years ago, I was released from prison for a non-violent offense after serving a life sentence under California’s three strikes law. For twenty-five years, prison regulations, jailhouse etiquette, and religion informed me that lust of the flesh and pre- or extra-marital sex amounted to sinful and despicable conduct.
Prisoners can lose time for engaging sexual activity in a visiting room, indecent exposure, consensual participation in sodomy or oral copulation, and sexual disorderly conduct. The rules of conduct for California prisoners are codified under Title 15 of the California Code of Regulations, and are enforceable by way of disciplinary forfeiture where time gets added to a prisoner’s sentence for misconduct. Thus, if I got caught masturbating in the privacy of my cell, I could receive an infraction for sexual misconduct. Moreover, to obtain some semblance of privacy while satisfying a need, I also ran the risk of being disciplined for obstructing the view of the cell by installing a modesty curtain . Prisoners also receive disciplinary infractions for staring lustfully at female staff, for sexual misconduct unofficially defined as reckless eyeballing . Then, there are additional circumstances where prisoners get penalized for becoming too intimate with staff. I came perilously close to being written up and displaced from the general population via transfer to administrative segregation for being overly familiar with staff . And lastly, given the fact that rules violations are highly scrutinized by the Board of Parole Hearings, complying with prison regulations hugely impacted my ability as an indeterminately sentenced prisoner to cater to a carnal desire. Parole hearing Commissioners view rules violations as a harbinger of impending criminality—prisoners who choose to disobey the law in prison demonstrate the same propensity to disobey the law in society. Accordingly, he or she poses an unreasonable risk to society and must be found unsuitable for parole. Because of such an outcome, I trained my energies on remaining disciplinary free in order to facilitate my release on parole. Fortunately, for 25 years my response to the urge to procreate went undetected, and I was never penalized for sexual misconduct.
Prisoners assigned to clerical duties and office work positions requiring an extensive amount of staff/prisoner interaction are rotated to other positions within the institution, for good reason. While working as a clerk for more than 18 years I had several encounters with female staff. Even though prison staff could be sanctioned for fraternizing or having sexual relations with incarcerated persons, there was nevertheless attraction between the sexes. In my case I never had sex, but several women and I became unmistakably intimate: a secret touch here, a special hello there, evocative body language, a nice compliment, and steamy conversations.
Women I came in contact with communicated their feelings by transmitting subtle gestures of concern. They seemed to sense my deprivation from having had any form of intimacy for a prolonged period. They knew I had been out of circulation, and it seemed to me that they wanted me to get back in touch with what it felt like to interact with and be cared for by a woman. For me it felt as if I was being seen for the first time in a long time.
In prison, there is no such thing as privacy, because prisoners are constantly being observed by staff or other prisoners. So, cops and civilians weren’t the only ones demanding vigilance when it came to my desire to tend to a need. I had to keep an eye out for any of my brethren or other incarcerated people that could potentially cause me to become a source of shame and embarrassment should they inadvertently catch me in the throes of ecstasy during a momentary delivery of self-care. Nevertheless, to heed the advice to safeguard my soul, or evade peer-to-peer detection, I tried to quell the urge to engage in sexual gratification by treating it as a loathsome pastime. Masturbation, then, was no different than fornication, a sinful act that harms the soul. But no matter how hard I tried heeding the advice of chaplains or incarcerated acolytes, I couldn’t stifle that instinctual urge. I reckon the longest I was able to ignore an incessant craving for sex was about two months. Sometimes relief from pent up sexual energy came in the form of a nocturnal emission, or I employed the more conventional method of taking matters into my own hand.
After I became a product of the Prison Industrial Complex, I concluded my existence was not unlike that of a eunuch. On the one hand I constantly felt like an inquisitive youngster whose parents wouldn’t allow them to explore the taboo tugging at the fabric of their awakened sexuality. And on the other hand, after years of hiring myself out as a beast of burden I stuffed my libido so deeply inside myself it seemed as though my genitals were grotesque, cancerous appendages that might as well have been severed from my body altogether. And that insidious supplanting of a need (to stifle a once robust sex drive) led me to believe any form of sexual gratification was an abomination. The thought of being with or admiring a woman’s voice, shape, face, hair, or other such whispers of provocation served to remind me of the telltale signs of weakness of faith. But now and again, sporadic bouts of clarity intervene, as the jarring of truth and belief produce a new reality, where the in-dwelling soul aligns itself with my biological mind and body, and refuses to subscribe to contrived notions of celibacy and abstinence, or any plea of dissonance with the Will of its Creator that authored such desires.
Thus, when it came to sex and intimacy in the prison setting all these dynamics invariably came into play. And on the matter of sex in prison the inquiry for me was squarely focused on how I might train both mind and body to suppress an inherently intrinsic need: hence the question—how does one suppress nature? To curtail an innate craving or preserve the standards of decency I tried abstinence, celibacy, and even religion, but the result was always the same—no matter how long and how hard I fought I could not overthrow nature. I had no control over an irrepressibly unchaste gland. And just as stems sprout through pavement, any attempts to contain my monstrous libido amounted to an exercise in futility. It was through practice and vigilance that I managed to escape an elongated sentence while catering to an instinct that rises to the level of food and drink, that drives you just as mad when you don’t attend to it. And as a returning citizen, I find myself being revisited by the rigors of incarceration through the subtle whisper of three unshakeable influences that constantly compel me to suppress or altogether deactivate my libido. In order to embrace my current reality in the aftermath of such a lengthy sentence, I find I must learn how to deconstruct a corrections-induced mentality that to this day counsels me to shun sex at all costs.
Our need for intimacy
We all felt the effects of minimal to no close-contact with our friends and family during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout this isolated period, the need for physical touch, or non-contact intimate face to face closeness was inaccessible to so many. Many of us did not realize they would miss this as much as we did. Many felt a sort of deprivation that led to a whole host of mental health issues. The pandemic highlighted for us just how deprivation feels. Now imagine being incarcerated for years on end, where any sort of physical touch with another person or simple self-gratification is illegal. On top of this, strip searches are permissible, as well as access to your body at any time without consent by those who are imprisoning you because you are property of the state.
When I first came into the prison system in the early 1990s, there was no such thing as personal privacy or body autonomy. Our dignity and humanity went out the window. The first thing you did was strip nude in front of god and everybody, spread your ass cheeks, squat, and cough. It was routine to be told by a jailer or a prison guard to lift up your nut sack and the bottom of your feet as they searched you for contraband. It was one of the most humiliating experiences I have ever had in my life. If I went around doing this to people, I'd be convicted of serious sex offenses but the state has carte blanche.
In the 1990s prison guards could feel or caress your body for any reason and simply call it a search. They could tell you to strip down to your boxers or strip nude and you could get a write up if you disobeyed. You had no human will of your own, no opportunity to not consent. Our bodies are property of the state, and being able to refuse was not an option. Force was permissible, and resistance only served to increase the level of violence enacted upon you. Guards could grab and squeeze your breast, buttocks, and crotch. This highly intrusive conduct is a sexual assault in the larger society but is considered the norm in prison.
Sexual assault happens often in prison. Any sexual encounter is always classified as an assault even when its consensual. California penal code section 289.6 prohibits inmates, prison volunteers, contractors, and employees from engaging in any type of sexual activity. Yet condom dispensers sit in common areas of the prison, so people who choose to break the law can practice safe sex. A lot of men have sex with each other in prison and so do women. Everyone knows it’s happening but it’s difficult to police. Guards become uncomfortable. But some will sometimes pull people from cells who are obviously engaged in sexual activity. They are written up for violating the rules. No signs hang from any wall in prison saying practice safe sex. But HIV, aids, hepatitis, and other diseases are rampant. Condoms are the warning. A phone number is posted for you to call if raped by a guard or prisoner. It's a PREA hotline.
One Friday in December of 2021, I was called to a correctional lieutenant’s office for a PREA interview. PREA is an acronym used to describe the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, a law implemented in 2003. It requires that federal, state, and local correctional facilities maintain and enforce a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual assault for both inmates on inmate and staff on inmate sexual contact. The lieutenant asked me if I have ever been raped, or if I've raped someone else while in prison. He asked me if I felt like a victim or if I had a fear of being raped. He then asked me if I identified as male or female.
Sex is illegal in prison. The state controls our bodies, and at the same time, our sexuality is closely monitored. There are only two options for sex available to incarcerated people-masturbation or infrequent family visits with your spouse-which few people have access to. Masturbation is hard to police, but they do, getting caught in the act comes with a write up that can be used against you when attempting to parole. They'd outlaw it altogether if they could, because it's one of a few pleasures an incarcerated person can steal while in this hell. Ironically, they have condom dispensers bolted on walls throughout the prison full of brightly colored condoms. But sex is technically illegal. Two men can engage in consensual sexual activity while incarcerated, and they do all the time, but in the eyes of the law, they are raping each other.